26. Lope
26
Lope
Those who are brave
Fight past their limit;
Those who are brave
Press on through the final tears they have to shed.
W ith one sharp pull, the door was open. There was the horrible, grating, keening sound of Shadows as they pushed past us like storm winds. My head was spinning, my legs were trembling, but every second I lingered in the doorway, I let another Shadow through.
I lunged through the door and heard Eglantine slam it shut behind me. I whirled on my heel, and there it was, closed, with a shining golden doorknob. And behind me, the Underworld lay beyond—where there was only blackness, thicker than darkness, pure nothing.
Something slithered around my feet. I gasped and gaped down at a dozen Shadows, their claws clutching at the fabric of my breeches. My hand flew to my hip—but my sword was not there.
I turned back to the monsters, crawling, grasping, but not yet opening their mouths. Not yet trying to kill. Fear paralyzed me. I’d never felt so useless before. So naked. Without a sword, who was I? If not a knight, who was I?
I moved to bat them away with a blow of my arm—I was trained to fight, even without my sword—but my arms were slow, useless. Like they wouldn’t obey me.
It was true then. All of my combat skills—gone.
Still the Shadows undulated around my feet. I shut my eyes and listened to my haggard breaths and my pounding heart.
You’re doing this for her , I chanted. Whatever it takes, it’ll be worth it for her.
Opening my eyes again, I glanced about me, my hands fisted so that I would have the fortitude not to look at the monsters.
My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. I stood atop a tall spiral staircase. Below, plains and hills of black grass extended all around me, and even the moon looked desolate, casting long white beams over an inky ocean below. It was a strange moon, glowing and misshapen. A crystal. More crystals, bright purple, gleamed in the dark expanse above the water. This world was only an echo of the one above. A darker, sadder one.
Ofelia. Find Ofelia.
My feet slowly trudged forward, down the stairs, pushing through the swamp of creatures surrounding me. They clung to me still, following my every step.
“Leave me,” I spat.
They hissed, that awful sound that made me shudder in spite of myself, but followed me still.
“Fine,” I muttered. “This is your world, isn’t it? If you’re to follow me, can you at least take me to Ofelia?”
The Shadows didn’t move. I wasn’t their master, I supposed.
Their master. What had Ofelia said?
That the Shadows were messengers for the Shadow King.
I needed to find him first if I intended to bargain for Ofelia. If I could send him a message, I could follow his creatures, his heralds, right to him.
“I have a message to be delivered to the king of Shadows,” I told the crowd gathered all around me.
They did not so much as whisper.
I sighed, dropping my hands to my sides. “Tell him Lope de la Rosa wishes to have an audience with him.”
Silence, still. If they didn’t want a message, what did they want?
Stories, Ofelia had said. They didn’t just take breath, they took stories.
I had no strength, but I had my poetry still.
I did not memorize my poems, but after so many nights on the wall, watching, listening to the night, doing nothing but waiting for monsters, I’d gotten quite good at creating new poems and then letting them die in my memory. Verses and words, detached, disjointed, sewn back together in my head just because they sounded lovely as a whole.
I wasn’t a real poet, in my mind, not like the poet I named myself after or any of the greats. Meter and rhyme took effort for me. But poetry was, at its core, playing with words. Like how Ofelia wove her stories, adding twists and turns, new characters and new surprises. Ideas to be strung together like pearls side by side on a strand. I couldn’t explain how I knew the way they fit together. Something deep in my chest told me so.
I closed my eyes and pretended to be back on the wall. Thinking moony thoughts of Ofelia, and Carlos saying, You’re dreaming of someone, aren’t you?
Yes. Yes, I was always thinking of her.
“ A girl in love ,” I whispered.
“She sings a song no one will hear,
She bears a wound no one will see.
She places her neck upon an altar
And draws the knife herself.
She pleads to the gods for mercy,
She pleads to the skies for courage,
A thousand Shadows she battles a night,
And none compares with the monster of her mind,
Drawing her to what she cannot have.”
My voice shook. My poem wasn’t done. My story wasn’t through.
“No more.
She will brave your monsters,
Your Shadows,
Your claws,
And she will proclaim the love
She’s kept silent for far too long.”
Upon opening my eyes, wet with tears, I found that the Shadows had retreated a few paces, watching with their empty faces, tilted as if to hear me better. Then, like leaves swept up by a gust of wind, they moved together in one wave, winding through the tall grass. They streamed forward, down the steps, in the direction of the moon—east, then, if there was an east here.
I chased after them, my feet thankfully still nimble despite the sacrifice I’d made.
The farther I ran, the more I could see before me. The beam of moonlight ahead disguised a tall white spire on a hill. A castle of sorts, as high as Le Chateau was wide. It looked like a knife, piercing the blackness of night above.
The Shadows led me to the castle, which was just as dark and filled with Shadows as the rest of this meager excuse of a world. The other monsters turned their faceless heads toward me but did not move, did not lunge, did not try to kill me. Even so, with each Shadow I saw, I remembered my training. I remembered Carlos. I remembered how close to dying I had been.
If not for Ofelia.
“Take me to her,” I whispered, praying, not to any gods but to these monsters below. I prayed that she would not be harmed. That in the hour since I’d seen her in the mirror, she looked the same, that her heart still beat.
I would rescue her. This would all be over soon.
The darkness of the castle faded as I climbed a winding staircase. Brilliant white moonlight streamed in from a great gap in the castle walls, like it’d been blown away by cannon fire. Something in the sky caught my eye—large, puffy clouds, floating in the air, where I was certain there’d been none before. They shone brightly, even where they did not rest in moonlight. Like clusters of stars.
“Lope!”
My heart seemed to leap out of my chest. I whipped toward the sound, the dearest sound in the world. At the top of this great white set of stairs stood my love, resplendent in the moonlight that crowned her auburn hair with silver. Her tears sparkled like crystals. Her smile shone down upon me, and I would have rested there forever, if not for the ache in my chest begging me to go to her.
“Ofelia.”
It was only a whisper, only an exhausted, exhilarated little murmur of delight. Part of me couldn’t believe she was really here. Or that she’d want me.
But now she was racing down the stairs toward me.
I bounded toward her, letting Shadows slip past, parting around us.
We met on the landing of the stairs, and she threw her arms around me and—
And I kissed her.
I kissed her.
I kissed her.
My head spun. I pulled back and looked into her eyes, at the fondness there. After everything, fool that I was, I was still breathless at the thought that she cared for me, too.
Then Ofelia’s hands cupped my face, drawing me closer still.
In a moment to breathe, she whispered, “Don’t let go,” and so I didn’t.
Her lips brushed my scar. Her fingers tucked a long, errant curl behind my ear, and her lips met mine again, sweeter and more fervent than any poem I could try to write.
Give me a thousand more moments like this. Give me a thousand words to try to piece together the wonder of having her in my arms, feeling her heart crash against mine, her fingers clutching my waist.
“What’s this?” said a strange, groaning voice.
Every bit of my soldier’s instincts flooded into me, and in a flash, I stepped in front of Ofelia and reached for the sword at my hip. My hand grasped at empty air, and my heart dropped at the reminder.
Standing at the top of the stairs was the Shadow King, just as I had seen him in the library. But what I thought before were horns were actually the golden spikes of a thin crown. And here, face-to-face, his eyes blazed like two white flames. He was flanked at either side by Eglantine’s mother and Mirabelle de Bouchillon. More prisoners of this Shadow King.
“Lope de la Rosa,” he said, drawling my name, as if he savored every syllable. “My favorite poet. Welcome to my kingdom.”
He, who had created the Shadows. Who had bargained with Léo. Who accepted lives as payment. I imagined plunging my sword into his chest and escaping with Ofelia, with everyone. Fighting had always been my solution before. But now I was powerless. Except for my words. Except for my poetry.
“Release Ofelia,” I demanded. “Release everyone!”
I blinked, and the monster now stood an inch away from us, its neck craned so that the void of its face was close to mine. It had the same hoarse, shuddering breath as the Shadows. Ofelia yelped and clung to me.
“What did you do, Ofelia, when you greeted this girl? Your mouths touched.”
There was a moment of silence.
Ofelia glanced back at me, her round face pleasantly pink with a blush. “We kissed, Your Majesty. It’s how we show affection to the person we love most in the world. And you see, this girl... she’s the girl I love most.”
Her fingers wove with mine. I felt as if my heart might fly out of my chest and back to the world above.
“Ah,” said the monster, understanding something. “You love each other very much, then.”
“Yes,” we said in one voice. We smiled. For a moment or two, I forgot that I was in another world, a world without light. I had everything I needed, with her hand in mine.
Almost.
“I’ve come here to make a deal with you,” I told the Shadow King. “I want to take Ofelia and her mother back above.” I glanced over his shoulder, spying Eglantine’s mother as she and Ofelia’s mother both descended the stairs. “I intend to take Sagesse with me, too.”
“One can be more easily arranged than the other,” said the Shadow King, slow and thoughtful. He pointed a long finger at Sagesse. “I have preserved all the king’s sacrifices. Time does not march forward here. But should Sagesse return to the world above, all the years gone from her time would return to her. She would be, I believe, eighty-three years old.”
Sagesse’s face remained stony; undeterred.
“On the other hand,” said the king, “Ofelia and Marisol would age only by a few days. Nothing noticeable at all.” His long fingers curled into a fist. “Even so, you would have to offer me a rare prize indeed in exchange for such a treasure.”
“What kind of prize?” I asked.
“For a chance at immortality, for an everlasting throne, King Léo was willing to trade away the people he loved most in this world.”
“I have no one left,” I said. “You already possess the one I love more than anything.”
Ofelia wrapped her arms around my middle and pressed her cheek against my heart. Like when we used to rest against each other in the manor’s gardens. Like things were normal, even just a little bit.
“I gave you my power to fight so that I could come here,” I told him. “What more do you want from me?”
Ofelia lurched in my grip, looking up at me with wide eyes. “What?!”
I nodded and brushed a curl from her forehead. “I gave him my sword and my ability to wield it. But for you I’d give anything. Do anything. Don’t you see? I’ve reached into the Underworld for you.”
“I know.” She blinked, tears sparkling against her lashes. “But the world is dangerous, Lope, and now you must live in it defenseless?”
“I do not live in it at all if you’re not there,” I whispered. My hand cupped against her cheek. “Soon we’ll be together, back in the daylight, and we’ll find a place where we no longer have to fear monsters or men. I won’t need a sword anymore.”
She nodded, chewing on her lip. She didn’t quite believe me.
“What, then, will you give me?” asked the Shadow King. “It must be a treasure equal to three souls.”
Before, he’d asked for lives. And King Léo happily provided, but...
The king.
My eyes widened. “I’ll give you King Léo. The prideful man who thinks he can use you like some servant.”
Sagesse grinned wickedly. Ofelia’s mother gasped.
The Shadow King cocked his head at me, and though I couldn’t read the white flames of his eyes, there was something satisfied in them at my offering. Something vindictively pleased.
“That seems a suitable trade.” He extended his hand. “If you bring me King Léo alive, I will in turn allow you to take three sacrifices to the world above. Are we agreed?”
Ofelia tugged on my sleeve. Worry wrinkled her brow.
“How will you do it?” she whispered. “He’s a king . He’s surrounded by guards. He’s untouchable.”
I wished to look at her forever.
My thumb brushed against her cheek. It grew warm under my touch.
She loved me. This, this was what it meant to be happy.
I would have done anything to keep her forever.
“I may not have a sword,” I said, “but I’m clever. I infiltrated the palace to find you today.” I swept my fingertip against the bridge of her nose and delighted at how it made her smile. “Nothing will be impossible for us.”
Ofelia stood on her toes and kissed me again. My head swirled and my heart batted and I didn’t want anything else in the world, just her arms fastened around my middle forever.
Sagesse approached me, her head held high like a queen’s. She laid a hand against my arm. After decades in the Below, I imagined that her skin would be cold. But it was as warm as anyone’s.
She slipped a gold bracelet off her arm and onto mine. “Give this to my daughter until I see her again... in case... in case your mission should prove too great,” she said. The seer turned back toward the Shadow King. “Sire, you were able to create a mirror that showed the king this world. I humbly ask that you make one more mirror, a smaller one, so that my daughter can see me when she pleases.”
He cocked his head. “What will you give me for it?”
Ofelia balled her fists. “Sagesse has given you everything already,” she snapped. “Her stories, her life, her years. All she wants is a way to see her daughter more. Is that so horrible? Can’t you be generous, just for once?”
“I can be,” he said, almost defensively. “But, dear Ofelia, what good is a bargain of mine if I give treasures away to mortals with no price?”
“It’s something humans do,” she replied. The fearlessness in her voice was like a perfect, harmonizing note within me. It made my blood sing with delight. “Humans give without asking for anything in return.”
“Why?” asked the monster.
“Kindness,” she replied. As if it was a concept this beast should understand. Ofelia swept Sagesse’s hands in hers. “Please, sire. You are powerful. You’ve created this palace and the moon and those clouds. It would be easy for you to make such a trinket for Sagesse.”
The Shadow King pulled his hand close to his heart, tightening his grasp into a fist. Then, when he unfurled his long fingers, two silver mirrors lay within, each about the size of my hand, with small, thin handles. He offered them to Sagesse.
She took them in her hands and curtsied before the monster. “Thank you, sire.”
“That was very kind,” Ofelia noted.
“Creating mirrors is a simple thing.” His neck twisted, his head bending toward me. His eyes, two white stars, focused unwaveringly on mine.
Sagesse pressed one of the little hand mirrors into my grasp. “Please give this to Eglantine,” she said. Her eyes crinkled behind her spectacles. “I look forward to seeing her again.”
“You will,” I vowed, and kept the mirror firmly in my left hand. With my right hand, I grasped the hand of the Shadow King.
“Our bargain is struck,” I said.
He bent low, his cold voice slithering into my ear. “If you try to trick or betray me... there will be punishment.”
I blinked, and suddenly I was pressed up against the door through which I’d entered this world. The castle was gone, the Shadows were gone, Sagesse and Mirabelle and Ofelia—all back in that castle, hidden in the moonbeam far beyond where I could see.
Part of me wished I had been given the chance to wish Ofelia farewell.
But perhaps this was better. After all, this was no goodbye.
We’d be together—just as soon as I captured the king.